Star Wars: The Old Republic Review
- Thread starter Steve Butts
- Start date
I cannot agree more. Honestly, underneath the graphics and title, it really is just another shade of WoW. Which, to be fair, isn't the worst thing, but the lack of any innovation is disappointing. It's going to make money and have subscribers because of the Star Wars brand, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it does go the way of Rift and be a distinctly more empty than not game a few months down the line.Zing said:
Personally, my biggest issue with the game is actually the graphics. I'm enjoying the storyline, more or less, though as the person I quoted stated, I don't really like the having to choose to be plain out evil vs saintly. I'd love to play a Smuggler who's greedy but only up to a point, and while I could theoretically make choices on both sides, from what I've seen you really need to go towards one end of the spectrum or the other.
Errr, but back to the original point, I'm rather disappointed in the graphics. The backgrounds can be nice sometimes, but frankly it feel like I'm playing City of Heroes, which was nice, yanno, 7 years ago. Don't even get me started on the jumping animation, that just makes me want to vomit.
I think the only way I'll keep on playing past the first 30 days is I still have nothing else to do after it.
My opinion aside, I find it odd that so many people are offering their opinion on the game while also admitting to either never having played it, or having only played it for a limited time.
Bias and conjecture are things we should try and avoid.
Bias and conjecture are things we should try and avoid.
Honestly? I played it. There were a lot of things I didn't like that I could itemize and report, but quite frankly, the game didn't work for me. Should I have forced myself to log another 20 hours or forced myself to get to level 50 so that I could turn around and tell you, that this is still my opinion?Grey Day for Elcia said:
If I tell you I think the game plays like WoW, that is conjecture, because I never played wow. If someone who has a level 80 Paladin tells you TOR plays like WoW, even though they never got past level 20 in TOR, that's not conjecture.
As to bias? You can't get rid of it completely, I'm not going to lash the game for it's story, I didn't see enough of it to know for certain that it doesn't get better, but goddamn, what I saw was awful. Should I have staggered through the rest of the campaign, analyzing this dross in order to provide a more objective argument? Maybe, but honestly, I'm not getting paid for this, so why should I torture myself?
Self Selection: If someone doesn't like the game, they're (usually) not going to keep playing it. The thing that should worry you isn't the players who pick it up, and put it back down, it's the players who burned out less than a month after release, and put it down.
I loved that review and i think he hit the high notes. I think if you just lose yourself into the story, it makes up for a lot of flaws.(Beside its better than what George Lucas has done with the story in recent years.
I find it disingenuous and deceptive to report on something you've not properly experienced and my comment was aimed towards people who have played so little of the game they still have yet to encounter core components or have simply not played it at all.Starke said:
If you were to sit down with a ten hour game, play two hours of it and say "I found the controls and combat to sluggish, broken, unresponsive and boring" I'd think you'd seen enough of it to make that claim. When someone plays an MMO to level 9 and makes broad, sweeping comments concerning the entire game, not just the segment they experienced, I more or less consider their opinion moot. Not because of my own personal opinion, but because they are commenting on something they only know a fraction about.
Really, I simply wish people would stop trying so hard to be a fan or a hater. Sounds extreme, I know, but with just about every release you see and hear people complaining, critiquing, praising and defending games they've never played, out of pure principle. Bias is innate, like you said--you cannot ever review something objectively, as everything you see and hear is influenced by your personal experiences and view point--but to come to something or avoid something all together based on conjecture and with preconceptions and *still* offer an opinion is just... bad.
Skyrim is a similar case. I don't like it. However, I put in a dozen hours before forming an opinion. Take a quick peek over the forum and you'll find a multitude of people bashing or defending Skyrim despite admitting to never playing it or, at the most, having played it for an hour or so. If you play ten minutes of a game and find it ugly, boring or just uninteresting, feel free to say so. But don't make comments about more than you actually played yourself.
Bandwagons, haters, fanboys -- all words I thought overused. But you know what? They aren't. And that sucks.
I'm ranting, so I'll stop. I hope my opinion was well enough expressed and you can understand what I'm getting at. Peace
my problem with the review is that it doesn't say anything about the endgame. Because as many people already seem to suggest, it's hard to maintain story drive in the endgame.
If you devoted yourself to it and read all the text WoW had some reasonable story lines leading upto the endgame. They just where a little disjointed.
The endgame is where an MMO stands or falls. Thats where grinding becomes an issue (for the bigger crafts or getting into that next tier of raiding gear) I haven't grinded much in WoW leveling. Especially in the newest content where they steared away from samy kill x quests as much as possible. OK I stopped WoW but thats because all my friends stopped and my lack of time for raiding kept me in a loop of Heroic running that became a little to familiar. I could dream those encounters. And I fear TOR will have very similar end game problems.
What a new MMORPG should really adress is the problem of challenge. like in WoW where you had heroics, that was a good start, but what me and a couple of buddies really craved was a mode where you could really demand the max of yourself and you toon, without real extra reward but just a challenge to keep you interested. More HP on mobs more diverse attack paterns to force you to think on your feet in a way that can't be demanded from the real casual player. Would I know how exactly to do that, no but I'm not a game designer.
If you devoted yourself to it and read all the text WoW had some reasonable story lines leading upto the endgame. They just where a little disjointed.
The endgame is where an MMO stands or falls. Thats where grinding becomes an issue (for the bigger crafts or getting into that next tier of raiding gear) I haven't grinded much in WoW leveling. Especially in the newest content where they steared away from samy kill x quests as much as possible. OK I stopped WoW but thats because all my friends stopped and my lack of time for raiding kept me in a loop of Heroic running that became a little to familiar. I could dream those encounters. And I fear TOR will have very similar end game problems.
What a new MMORPG should really adress is the problem of challenge. like in WoW where you had heroics, that was a good start, but what me and a couple of buddies really craved was a mode where you could really demand the max of yourself and you toon, without real extra reward but just a challenge to keep you interested. More HP on mobs more diverse attack paterns to force you to think on your feet in a way that can't be demanded from the real casual player. Would I know how exactly to do that, no but I'm not a game designer.
I guess I have to rely on Guild Wars 2 to save the MMO genre.
I have two major irks with this review. Firstly, the claim that this introduces "role playing" elements that other MMOs lack. Well that defends on how you define "role playing". Star Wars: The Old Republic gives you a story and a biography identical to thousands of others and gives you no control, whereas other MMOs let YOU define your character and give you more freedom (and no, by defining your character, I don't mean giving you a dialogue wheel and a morality bar, I mean letting you decide your character's motivations and your character's history that isn't from a selection of in game prompts.)
Secondly, the criticism of ToR's hotkey and abilities based gameplay because this is "MMO" gameplay. This is incorrect. It is "typical MMO gameplay" because that's how WoW did it and everybody wants to copy WoW, an apparent formula for success". It is possible to create a massively multiplayer game without this style of gameplay, as Guild Wars will hopefully show us.
I will be avoiding this game due to horror stories I've heard and my diminishing respect of Bioware and the Star Wars franchise.
I have two major irks with this review. Firstly, the claim that this introduces "role playing" elements that other MMOs lack. Well that defends on how you define "role playing". Star Wars: The Old Republic gives you a story and a biography identical to thousands of others and gives you no control, whereas other MMOs let YOU define your character and give you more freedom (and no, by defining your character, I don't mean giving you a dialogue wheel and a morality bar, I mean letting you decide your character's motivations and your character's history that isn't from a selection of in game prompts.)
Secondly, the criticism of ToR's hotkey and abilities based gameplay because this is "MMO" gameplay. This is incorrect. It is "typical MMO gameplay" because that's how WoW did it and everybody wants to copy WoW, an apparent formula for success". It is possible to create a massively multiplayer game without this style of gameplay, as Guild Wars will hopefully show us.
I will be avoiding this game due to horror stories I've heard and my diminishing respect of Bioware and the Star Wars franchise.
Got it, Love it, Suck at it, Until I get help from friends... ^_^ (11/10)
Sadly though there are sucky parts to the game. Namely that playing both republic and lightside is really boring for me. Besides the fact that your characters gets shitloads more attitude than characters on other mmorpgs mainly because your characters speak in this game but I only found the male Bounty Hunter voice to be the only one with actual badass sounding comments. (my friend informed me the dude who voices him is from something i like incidentally can for the life of me remember tho lol) Every other class voice is just generic vanilla robot. Also the hand movements are meh and i don't get the sense that my character's doing anything different from the norm you'know because let's face it it's crap going by the book and doing everything you're told.
... Also yeh Space Combat is bad... Real bad... An acutal downgrade from Star Wars Battlefront 2. Which even though is was blocky, hard to target and really needing polish it still kicked the pants off of this version. You don't get any control... Ok smartass you get "some" control but that just ain't even close to a little control over how you can play the battle and do things in a different, more tailored to the player kind of way.
Sadly though there are sucky parts to the game. Namely that playing both republic and lightside is really boring for me. Besides the fact that your characters gets shitloads more attitude than characters on other mmorpgs mainly because your characters speak in this game but I only found the male Bounty Hunter voice to be the only one with actual badass sounding comments. (my friend informed me the dude who voices him is from something i like incidentally can for the life of me remember tho lol) Every other class voice is just generic vanilla robot. Also the hand movements are meh and i don't get the sense that my character's doing anything different from the norm you'know because let's face it it's crap going by the book and doing everything you're told.
... Also yeh Space Combat is bad... Real bad... An acutal downgrade from Star Wars Battlefront 2. Which even though is was blocky, hard to target and really needing polish it still kicked the pants off of this version. You don't get any control... Ok smartass you get "some" control but that just ain't even close to a little control over how you can play the battle and do things in a different, more tailored to the player kind of way.
I don't find them limited, personally, so far I haven't bumped into a single copy of any of my characters, it helps that I'm not rolling a white human like 75% of all the other characters I bump into. (And as an RPer, it is especially awkward to be the only alien in all white human crowd)SteelStallion said:
And I hope you're not one of those people who insist on playable Ithorians or Trandoshans because that's not going to happen. If most people can't even get themselves to roll a Twi'lek then a playable Trandoshan is just going to be a waste of resources.
And I like the fact they use mirror classes, makes balancing the two factions much more manageable. It's the same reason why most team & class based FPS use the same classes and weapons on both sides, they'd have to a lot more balance work for both PvE and (especially) PvP if they had divergent classes.
Dare I ask what horror stories you've heard? Because I'm having a whale of a time in TOR myself.ZiggyE said:
And while I'm really looking forward to Guild Wars 2, at the end of the day different players will still need to fulfil different roles in order to succeed at a certain objective, so while the dedicated healer is gone, there'll still be those who do damage, those who prevent and/or absorb damage, and those who CC up a storm. And while preventing damage is supposed to be a shared responsibility in GW2, question is if the community will follow suit on that. And at the end of the day, you're still using hotkeys and abilities, key differences being however that you need to make a build of ten skills and make those work until you get back to town. There are some things you simply can't avoid in an MMO, Arena.net is trying bravely to change things up, but I doubt they'll change everything. And not that they have to, at the end of the day, if GW2 is a fun game I'll gladly play it. TOR might not be a huge revolution (but certainly an evolution) in MMO land, but I'm having fun, and that's good enough for me.
Great review. I don't think there's any other game in recent months that has so warranted the phrase: Haters gonna hate.
There is such a feeling outside the game of people wanting to hate this, because of Bioware, EA, Dragon Age 2, loyalty to WoW that it feels utterly ridiculous to even try to present an objective review. Oddly, inside the game, everyone is having a whale of a time, save for those unfortunate few with the framerate issues.
To those who are saying the "story" argument is overblown: it's not. I've played many MMOs and put significant effort into many of them. This is the only one where you feel like your character is a part of an actual narrative. The closest I've seen another MMO get is probably a tie between LotRO and GW1 but neither of them actually gave the option of connecting with your own character. Even moreso when you are grouped with others. You can try to argue this, you can give examples of other MMOs with a narrative, but you'd be wrong. This IS moving things forward and is the best example of a story-driven MMO you're likely to see in a good while.
P.S. Acrisius: You're right. The IA storyline is possibly the strongest in the game. It has less of a slow start than the others, although many of the others are better than the Prologue would have you believe. Jedi Knight story is particularly strong.
There is such a feeling outside the game of people wanting to hate this, because of Bioware, EA, Dragon Age 2, loyalty to WoW that it feels utterly ridiculous to even try to present an objective review. Oddly, inside the game, everyone is having a whale of a time, save for those unfortunate few with the framerate issues.
To those who are saying the "story" argument is overblown: it's not. I've played many MMOs and put significant effort into many of them. This is the only one where you feel like your character is a part of an actual narrative. The closest I've seen another MMO get is probably a tie between LotRO and GW1 but neither of them actually gave the option of connecting with your own character. Even moreso when you are grouped with others. You can try to argue this, you can give examples of other MMOs with a narrative, but you'd be wrong. This IS moving things forward and is the best example of a story-driven MMO you're likely to see in a good while.
P.S. Acrisius: You're right. The IA storyline is possibly the strongest in the game. It has less of a slow start than the others, although many of the others are better than the Prologue would have you believe. Jedi Knight story is particularly strong.
Night of good sleep makes a happy frank <3 Righties, where were we...
But not doing it doesn't penalize you in any way and it's easily possible to not even realize you can do the space missions.
So yeh, saying this is TOR's greatest fault is like saying FF7's greatest fault was its minigames in the golden saucer (best analogy i could come up with at this time xP).
Agente L said:
Whilst its possible they will pull the "he didn't really die and just teleported away" trick which would be all kinds of lame as he did have some genuinely awesome last words "and so in the end i am nothing as I go back to the darkness, now I know how you felt old friend....", as far as I know the flashpoints story are "cannon" in that republic frees revan in their flashpoint, he then goes to meet the jedi council and something and then leaves for the foundry which is where the empire "slays" him. Or at least this is what word on my server was, not like i have official bioware approval for that, but makes sense.
What really confuses me about the space missions hate is that it's 100% optional and you are never directed or even asked to do a single mission. Its like a minigame you do to take a break from main mission or an easy way to get that last bunch of xp to level.mega48man said:
But not doing it doesn't penalize you in any way and it's easily possible to not even realize you can do the space missions.
So yeh, saying this is TOR's greatest fault is like saying FF7's greatest fault was its minigames in the golden saucer (best analogy i could come up with at this time xP).
Peh i was proclaiming the agent had the best story worth the price of admission way before him! >:O Agent story is nothing but pure awesomness, being consistenly good at all times with crechendos of pure awesomness. The IA story could have ended at act 1 and i'd have been happy, but now, it just keeps on giving and finding new ways of being awesome. Whichever bioware writer wrote it, I owe him/her a drink.VulakAerr said:
Others have had their say on this, but I feel the need to add my own two cents as well.
It's quite a decent review. But I can't help but think that Mr. Butts' definition of "real roleplaying" is very different from mine. To me TOR's conversation system isn't roleplaying, it's choosing a path through a narrative. "Choose Your Own Adventure" if you will. You're not the one roleplaying, the animators and voice actors are roleplaying 'your' character. Oftentimes the choices you make can have surprising results as far as what your character actually does and says and that should never be the case in roleplaying. It seems to me that the cinematic conversations are no more roleplaying than sitting in the audience for improv theater is acting.
Don't get me wrong. I do honestly believe that The Old Republic is the best MMO I've ever played. I've never enjoyed an MMO as much as I do TOR (that's not to say that I haven't enjoyed myself more in other MMOs, but that was despite the game in question and not because of it). But roleplaying it is not. In fact I agree with others here that it seems to make roleplaying more difficult due to its restrictive (if enjoyable) stories.
But then I've disagreed for many years with BioWare on what roleplaying is. To them it seems to be "the developers tell a story and let you make a few choices in it to give the illusion that you're part of it" where for me a vital part of roleplaying is that the players are the ones telling the story.
It's quite a decent review. But I can't help but think that Mr. Butts' definition of "real roleplaying" is very different from mine. To me TOR's conversation system isn't roleplaying, it's choosing a path through a narrative. "Choose Your Own Adventure" if you will. You're not the one roleplaying, the animators and voice actors are roleplaying 'your' character. Oftentimes the choices you make can have surprising results as far as what your character actually does and says and that should never be the case in roleplaying. It seems to me that the cinematic conversations are no more roleplaying than sitting in the audience for improv theater is acting.
Don't get me wrong. I do honestly believe that The Old Republic is the best MMO I've ever played. I've never enjoyed an MMO as much as I do TOR (that's not to say that I haven't enjoyed myself more in other MMOs, but that was despite the game in question and not because of it). But roleplaying it is not. In fact I agree with others here that it seems to make roleplaying more difficult due to its restrictive (if enjoyable) stories.
But then I've disagreed for many years with BioWare on what roleplaying is. To them it seems to be "the developers tell a story and let you make a few choices in it to give the illusion that you're part of it" where for me a vital part of roleplaying is that the players are the ones telling the story.
Why?SupahGamuh said:
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In other news, I would love to play the game, but the fact it glitches on launch and leaves me with a black screen while the game sounds continue hinders that somewhat. Common problem that still needs to be fixed. Thanks, Bioware. Truly.
I want the SWTOR the reviewer played , as the one I am playing is not as described...
The SWTOR I got is a bland and boring MMO with pretty SW trappings draped over its sparse skeletal body, where the majority of the huge funding went into paying the voice actors and the launch party because quiet frankly the rest of the game is dull... expect the sounds, they are awesome.
Combat is about the same as a typical WoW clone expect everyone is a pet using class, and most classes cant even fight mobs without thier pet being around to tank the aggro. What makes the SWTOR combat a bit more exciting is the sound effects, other than that it is typical
Graphics are basic, good but didnt really try hard to impress. Textures are low quality and during cutscenes the characters and textures really stand out as poor. Graphics may not make a game but WoW has better looking graphics without all the instancing SWTOR uses and is a dinosaur in terms of computer age.
The story mechanic is pretty good but the choices of light and dark are stupid, sorry but it boils down to simply do you want to get gear that requires Light III or Dark IV... there is no meaningfull choice. The other choices are I am a goodie two shoes and accept the task or I am a greedy sob and accept the task, or refuse task... thats basically it for choices.
The actual questing is a yawnfest for the most part, usually involves running looooooong distances on a narrow road that is walled in to prevent taking intresting shortcuts, a short spell of fighting mobs for drops ( drop rate is very high ) and then a loooooong run back to hand in the quest... there is a very good reason the autorun toggle is bound to mouse4, you will be running a LOT.
I actually enjoyed the Space Combat portions, it serves as a nice change from the linear grind of the main game as PvP is a joke early levels ( dont bother until at least 30 ), the Space Combat is a simplistic rail shooter with limited mechanics but is quiet a fun little mini game.
Summary: SWTOR is a bland , boring MMO that is propped up by pretty SW trappings and a Bioware style story mechanic. I would score it 3 out of 5 at most and reccommend for SW fans only, MMO fans looking for the next best MMO would be advised not to bother or at least wait for free trials.
The SWTOR I got is a bland and boring MMO with pretty SW trappings draped over its sparse skeletal body, where the majority of the huge funding went into paying the voice actors and the launch party because quiet frankly the rest of the game is dull... expect the sounds, they are awesome.
Combat is about the same as a typical WoW clone expect everyone is a pet using class, and most classes cant even fight mobs without thier pet being around to tank the aggro. What makes the SWTOR combat a bit more exciting is the sound effects, other than that it is typical
Graphics are basic, good but didnt really try hard to impress. Textures are low quality and during cutscenes the characters and textures really stand out as poor. Graphics may not make a game but WoW has better looking graphics without all the instancing SWTOR uses and is a dinosaur in terms of computer age.
The story mechanic is pretty good but the choices of light and dark are stupid, sorry but it boils down to simply do you want to get gear that requires Light III or Dark IV... there is no meaningfull choice. The other choices are I am a goodie two shoes and accept the task or I am a greedy sob and accept the task, or refuse task... thats basically it for choices.
The actual questing is a yawnfest for the most part, usually involves running looooooong distances on a narrow road that is walled in to prevent taking intresting shortcuts, a short spell of fighting mobs for drops ( drop rate is very high ) and then a loooooong run back to hand in the quest... there is a very good reason the autorun toggle is bound to mouse4, you will be running a LOT.
I actually enjoyed the Space Combat portions, it serves as a nice change from the linear grind of the main game as PvP is a joke early levels ( dont bother until at least 30 ), the Space Combat is a simplistic rail shooter with limited mechanics but is quiet a fun little mini game.
Summary: SWTOR is a bland , boring MMO that is propped up by pretty SW trappings and a Bioware style story mechanic. I would score it 3 out of 5 at most and reccommend for SW fans only, MMO fans looking for the next best MMO would be advised not to bother or at least wait for free trials.